


Caleb Dume and the Haunter in the Wind

by lordhadrian



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clones, Gen, Halloween, Horror, Jedi, Planet Geonosis (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26942242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordhadrian/pseuds/lordhadrian
Summary: A Star Wars Halloween tale inspired by the style of HP Lovecraft and the stories of the Headless Horseman.Mace Windu, Depa Billaba and Caleb Dume encounter a horrifying wraith from the past who wishes revenge against Mace
Kudos: 8





	Caleb Dume and the Haunter in the Wind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXBGDf2IDQI&t=949s

The Haunter in the Wind

It was an unfortunate turn of events. But it would grow from Inconvenience to absolute dread. Caleb Dume rode the shuttle with another student, along with a squad of Clone troopers, Master Depa Bilaba and Master Windu.

This mission would be his chance to prove himself, and Master Bilaba would choose him to be her padawan. But he sulked, for Depa had chosen another to be in the main group. Young Casus Belli had been chosen instead, and when Depa mostioned to the more fair haired student to join her and Mace Windu, Caleb's heart sank. He would wait yet longer to have a Master find him worthy.

The campaign across the system had brought a large bulk of Republic Forces to assault Geonosis when intel revealed another buildup of droid armies on the planet. 

Caleb felt an undescribable ache, a tremor that shook his senses. Something that gnawed itself through the Force like a parasite digging through the corpse of a tree. The sensation gnawed at him. The closer the LAAT shuttle approached Geonosis, weaving through the shadows of titanic rocks in the rings glowing from the pale sun from afar, the greater the dread. The greater the sense of an injustice crying out. He looked up at Depa's pale, stoic face, and the grimace of Mace Windu. The Clones were stoic from behind the stoney gazes of their helmets, frozen visages that held little comfort.

Slowly, the buzzery hum of the engines, guttered with each swerve through the floating maze. The rings of Geonosis, a death trap to all but the sturdiest of pilots. Caleb stared through the portal at the daunting world. The birthplace of war and infestation.

The LAAT reached the atmosphere. Mace sighed, Depa's eye twitched. Could they also sense it? Caleb looked at Casus as he stood diligently by Master Bilaba. Casus Belli had trained his whole life to fulfill his destiny. An amiable young lad, he was focused, his face never betrayed any notion that something wicked lay ahead. The shuttle landed. "Sir" Lieutenant Spiker turned to Windu "Our recon says there is an increase in the sand storms across the wastes. We may want to stay close to the Hive Nekropolis." Mace frowned "We'll need to infiltrate the tunnels. to get to the Droid factory if we want to stop this new army from being finished. The sooner we destroy the facility, the sooner we can drive the Separatists from Geonosis for good." Two Clones looked at each other. Their helmets hid any expression, but the feeling Caleb could sense from them was doubt. The Geonosians were crafty. And loyal to Count Dooku. The battle to drive out the Separatists from the planet could take years.

They had joined several other LAAT groups in the LZ, but the comfort of being in the large group of soldiers was stunted as the wind whipped, and the dust of the world flicked about. Caleb held his hand up to keep from being blinded. He could feel loneliness wailing out from the streets and paths of this ancient, dead alien city.

Such a cold loneliness in the wind.

Sounds of combat erupted in the deeper bowls of the city. "BUGS!" one of the troopers exclaimed "Time for some squashin!" the squad gripped their guns and gathered with Mace.

"Sir, Captain Argus of the 488th Legion is engaged with the enemy!" Spiker listened to his communication from the front lines.

Mace led the soldiers and Jedi through winding paths between buildings of alien design. Towers that twisted into impossible structures, mountainous building of concave and convexed shapes, constructed from the mucous style of Geonosian builders. Horrifyingly primitive yet solid, the city was a dead place, a Nekropolis since the war began. Archduke Poggle the lesser ruled with an iron fist, but fled with his people to catacombs where untold secrets and horrors lay.

The wind whipped in a more furious way. The dust storms that they had been warned about became a new enemy.

"I thought we were far from the storms!" Depa shuddered. Casus squinted and looked around. He began to feel uneasy. the storm was a prelude to something more foreboding. The Jedi could all feel it, though no one spoke.

"That is war" Mace replied. For him, it was inconvenience, but he walked fast. There was no time for being held back by the sand that assaulted them.

The further they ran to combat, the farther it seemed to drift away. The echoes of soldiers and droids bounced through the narrow streets and allies. Dark windows and holes that might be windows felt like alien eyes of a living dead city that watched and cursed their invasion. Even the squad of troops began to feel isolated, and the distant combat was a welcome noise.

Caleb tried to keep up, but was helped along by a trooper "Watch your step, sir" he carefully helped Caleb up a flight of steps. He watched as Mace, Depa and Casus were far ahead. He looked behind him to see that the large force they started with separated into ever smaller groups. The winding streets and paths of the city ate them into dark recesses. He could hear them, sense them in the Force, but the city digested them away, and his dread grew over the gnawing.

The storm became furious, seeming to pelt their small group into a preplanned direction.

"Stay together! We should be almost there!" Mace called out. Even he was looking around, confused. A large arch became visible from the dust that swirled about them, an open mouth that would swallow them, and each member of the group, even Mace, had hoped the belly of this structured beast would end the loneliness and lead to real combat. For even the contemptible pin head droids would be a welcome respite. Jumping into combat would release each of them from the cold, Hellscape that imprisoned them in the open. Mace waved everyone to rush through the arch, through the building to get to the fighting. The wind and dust were a fog now, a haze that followed them, almost unmerciful to deny them the comfort of combat. The tunnel was short, leading to another open arch.

Mace led his team to an open field with decrepit walls surround, The fog sucked away all noises of the battle beyond. The silence fell like snow on Hoth.

"Master..." Casus looked around, and felt cold. The soldiers were on high alert, their hairs raised.

"An ambush?" Spiker whispered. 

Caleb felt an uncontrolled terror upon him. His heart raced, his eyes darted. The field was out in the open, but walls surrounded them.

"Master Windu, where ARE we?" Depa froze in hesitation. It was unlike any Jedi to give in to fear, but the soldiers felt a danger. If the Jedi were hesitating, they were certainly in peril. Mace looked around. He DID recognize their location, even through the thick dust fog and wind. It was the first thing that made him hesitate. A terrible wind, yet the fog was not moved.

He remembered when he first confronted Dooku and the Bounty Hunter. He could hear foosteps in the fog. It was an ambush of sorts, but he only sensed one person. His heart felt a cold remembrance of being in the Arena of Geonosis. While Mace was nearly impervious to fear and terror, he sensed a darkness, a foreboding. A presence, a presence he had not felt since.......

"Halt!" Spiker called out "IDENTIFY YOURSELF!!". By now every one of them could hear the footsteps in the fog. The intruder stopped for a few seconds, and some of the fog lifted.

Everyone raised their weapons. Blasters and sabers as they saw a figure in the dusty mist. It was in old armor. Faded blue beskar. Caleb could not stop the terror from within. They outnumbered the stranger, yet there was a trembling. Everyone started to clearly make out that the armor was Mandalorian.

Mace squinted, and some of the soldiers gasped as the fog revealed ever so slowly the Wraith as it faced them. Which was a rather ironic thought since they recognized the armor and knew only one Mandalorian had worn it before his death at the hands of Mace Windu. Everyone had come to know the name Jango Fett, which made the terror even more ready to overwhelm them since the figure facing them did so without a certain kind of entirety to be able to do so. Mace gritted his teeth. It seemed the Force was taking his destiny into a direction no shatterpoint of anticipation could have ever calculated.

"Gods of Kobol!" Spiker almost wanted to scream. The fog swallowed up the Headless Hunter, and the soldiers could hear him walk again, prowling.

The men screamed, firing wildly into the storm. The Headless Hunter started running within the fog. "Casus!" Mace ordered "Stay by my side!"

Casus Belli had barely been able to keep Mace within sight from the dust. He heard the running steps as they got closer. Mace turned to him with urgency and waved him closer with a harsh signal. Perhaps he had clarity on the Wraith's intentions.

Casus Belli ran to him. But it was a blink as the armor sprinted from the cloud. The young Jedi was aware for a split second before the Wraith that was once Jango Fett severed him from existence. "CASUS!" Mace ran to the spot where the boy had stood just a moment before. Th soldiers fired wildly again, now shouting in terror and prepared to break. It was not so much that the opponent was fast, or could easily kill them in the fog. Every soldier was a veteran ready to face death on the battlefield. Fear did not come easily to Spiker or his men.

What made this a terror was how swift and agile the opponent was without any essence of life, without having the proper senses to see, hear or be aware. The grim appearance the Wraith had made was against all known sense of how Life and Death operated in the galaxy. Even the mysteries of the Force could not explain for them how such an opponent could ever exist and be a threat.

And yet, their logic had been challenged by death itself. Their certainty of the workings of the Universe had been torn apart. And that loss of certainty had gnawed at their sanity. Furthermore, Jango was the progenitor of all Clones. Everyone knew that Mace had slain him in the arena. The notion that such a spectre would return for revenge against the Jedi was a disturbing one. A greater notion that Jango might have returned to complete his lost form filled them with unbound fright. What if Jango had been cursed with unlife, forever searching the arena for his lost head? What if such a curse had left this ghoul in such a frustration that any head would suffice?

Mace and Depa did not give in to panic or supernatural notions, but the soldiers broke from the richness of their imagined curse that they felt seered into their nightmares, a curse that ultimately was Windu's to bear.

Caleb panicked, going into a blind run. It went against his training, but such a sight to what happened to Casus Belli had shook him to the core. Casus had been cleanly sliced by a phantasm blur in the fog.

It was within the fog Caleb Dume screamed his final screams before passing out. The wind blew one last, dreary time to lift the sandstorm and fog away. Mace and Depa rushed to Caleb's fainted form and carried him back to the LZ. the other soldiers had scrambled to the last known direction of the maw opening to the arena. Mace would soon regroup with Spiker and his men, but none spoke of the event.

Spiker, with a shake in his voice, called out to a higher command to transfer his unit to the frontlines asap. Combat would distract his squad, but only during their waking hours. Sleep would force each of them to revisit a place of death, and the cursed connection each of them felt with the Hunter.

Depa Bilaba would go on ahead to join the assault on the Separatists, but Mace stayed with Caleb to make sure he was in the safe confines of the medical unit. Mace had felt a slight nudge of responsibility for the event, but felt best to not inform the Council of such fascinating terror. It was unnatural, out of place in the proper cycle of life and death that every living being understood. Caleb stayed in a cold feint for days. He would scream in dreams that relived that final moment, the moment that made him question his own mind. While he would eventually awaken and continue as Depa's newest padawan, the sudden promotion made his sanity cringe at the earning of it.

the young ambitious padawan learner tripped over an incomplete corpse back in that arena on that fateful day, and he screamed as he recognized the robe of it once worn by his fellow student Casus Belli. The loss of the poor boy was fast, and Caleb screamed not only at the horror of Belli's body, but the result he witnessed, the final fate dealt to a boy that had been intended to grow under Bilaba's tutelage. Caleb witnessed the Hunter and its final trophy, the resting place of Casus Belli before his sanity forced him to pass out for the sake of its keeping to him.

But that was not even the deepest horror and revelation that cursed his sleep and the sleep of Spiker's men. The true horror that gave Caleb Dume a chill every night there after was knowing how Jango Fett was a Bounty Hunter in life. In life, no Hunter would ever stop at just one trophy, no matter how satisfying the prize. The Headless Hunter had taken a suitably gory piece for now, not only to feel complete upon its empty shoulders, but to even the score against the one man to ever defeat him. The sweetest revenge for the dead was to inflict it upon the living. Caleb felt his heart darken to coldness upon knowing it was only a matter of time before such a Hunter would desire new revenge out of envy for the living, and one trophy would never be enough.

As word spread from the mad trembling mouths of Spiker and his men through the front lines, many rattled Clone on Geonosis found themselves whispering a small prayer before sleep, to be lifted from the world before such time as the Haunter in the wind should grow restless for a new Head.


End file.
